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"For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack." - Rudyard Kipling
The fey needed their monarchs.
That hadn't always been true, as best Tony could tell, but the binding magic was entwined in their very souls now, and there was no getting out of it. Without someone to latch onto, the binding spell would choke the life right out of a fey, assuming it didn't drive them mad first.
Like it had his mother.
Tony was not mad. Tony was half human, and humans had free will and all that jazz.
Of course, his human half was also cursed, and that cursed half kept looking for a pack and was too young to declare itself the leader of said pack so -
So when he left school with its comforting array of authority figures and his dad left him, and took the tiny trace of pack they had with him, then Tony looked in the mirror at his glittering eyes and manic grin full of too many teeth and fought back a hysterical laugh. So when he pulled off some crazy stunt and someone demanded if he was mad, he felt that twisting, binding, whining magic coil a little tighter inside him.
And then he forced a laugh and said, "Not yet."
He needed a purpose. A leader. A group of people to surround himself with so he didn't get lost in the swirls of too loud, too bright, too full of too cold metal that were the cities that he couldn't bear to leave.
He'd thought about joining the military, but while the military took werewolves, they didn't take fey, and they weren't prepared to deal with a half-breed either.
The police were desperate enough for recruits that they didn't care.
Or, well. They didn't care when they recruited him. After a few years though, just when he almost felt like he'd formed a pack, they started remembering some of the nastier werewolf cases they picked up.
Packs imploding. Elderly leaders getting their throats ripped out. Unwanted pups left to die.
The people giving him orders started to get jumpy about that second one.
They didn't kick him out, exactly. They didn't have time. He left before they got the chance.
As soon as the fragile bonds broke, both his curses started twisting, and he didn't need a mirror to know he was running out of time.
Baltimore was his last chance, and he knew it.
And it almost worked. He had a partner. A fiancée. They weren't wolves - no wolf who could smell the fey on him would take him - but that was alright. They didn't need to be.
It could have been enough. It would have been enough.
Then his partner turned out to be dirty and his fiancée decided she wasn’t ready for the commitment, and that was it. Pack gone, hopes crushed, Tony DiNozzo on his own again.
He could have challenged them. He had that right. When he was standing facing Danny, he almost did. The whole world was growing red, and both the wolf and the fey knew only one way to react to betrayal.
He never even got to face Wendy. She just left a note. Apparently she hadn’t trusted him enough for a proper goodbye. Apparently she hadn’t realized that their connection was still fresh enough that he could have tracked her across the country.
But he didn’t. He didn’t kill Danny either. He just turned his partner in, said a mental goodbye to Wendy, and settled down to face what he should have known all along.
He was alone. He was always going to be alone. And it was going to kill him.
Tony sank down onto the couch and looked down at his shaking hands. His chest was past the point of uncomfortably tight. It felt like his ribs were being crushed. Every breath felt strangled. The only breathing space he had left were from the few spiderweb thin connections he had remaining, and those weren’t nearly enough of a barrier to protect him from the world that was screaming at every one of his senses.
One of those tenuous connections was just outside the door. He listened to the sound of knocking dully for a moment before it started attacking his skull like a jackhammer.
“It’s not locked,” he called. His voice sounded surprisingly calm.
The sense of connection grew stronger as Gibbs walked in. He nodded a greeting to the older man. He’d enjoyed working with Gibbs. The man was a natural leader, and he hadn’t flinched from Tony like most of his superiors had.
Gibbs leaned against the wall. “Heard you had to turn in your partner.”
“What, no surprise that he’s still breathing?” Tony asked bitterly. He ran a hand through his hair. “Sorry. That wasn’t aimed at you.”
Gibbs shrugged. “Instincts get to all of us in this job. No matter what we are.”
“Men, monsters, all,” he said with a biting smile he hoped covered the darkness in his eyes. “What can I do for you, Special Agent Gibbs?”
Gibbs shrugged again. “Just came to see how you were doing. I heard another rumor that you quit the force.”
“What can I say. Baltimore’s lost its charm.” He’d had some thought of trying over somewhere else, but that had been before the magic had really gotten its claws in. He was out of time for somewhere else. This conversation with Gibbs was the best he’d felt in a week.
“You ever think about D.C.?”
It was as good a place to die as any, he supposed, but he hadn’t really planned to take the trouble of moving - He blinked. “Was that a job offer?”
“Director’s been after me to find someone to work with. Thought maybe you’d be interested.”
NCIS. He’d never seriously considered anything having to do with the Navy before for reasons anyone who shared his curse would easily understand, but NCIS wasn’t the Navy, and surely the risk wasn’t that great.
And if this was his connection to Gibbs after their short connection, who knew how quickly it could grow?
One last chance for a pack. One last chance for a leader to satisfy the magic clawing at his chest.
“You’ve seen my file, right?” he checked. He didn’t want Gibbs to go into this unprepared.
“I’ll try to remember not to bring the good silver with my lunch,” Gibbs affirmed wryly. He turned towards the door. “I’ll see you in D.C.”
“I’m not that kind of werewolf!” Tony shouted after him.
He wasn’t sure Gibbs heard him, but it didn’t matter. He was wanted. He had accepted the invitation, more or less, and he intended to do so formally as soon as he could.
The barbed wire’s death grip on his ribs started to ease.
Tony kind of wished that Gibbs had mentioned that Abby was a vampire before shoving them into a room together. Blood and death were not good scents to stumble onto unprepared, although he had to admit that in his line of work he’d more or less gotten used to it.
And it wasn’t that the smell of blood coming from Abby’s drink cup smelled bad. Not at all.
Which was part of the problem, but he was supposed to have more control over himself than this, so he tore his eyes away from the cup and forced the instinctive snarl off his face and replaced it with a sheepish smile. “Sorry about that.”
“Hmph.” Abby put her own fangs away and looked at his skeptically. “So you’re Gibbs’ new probie.”
“Hey, I’m an experienced cop, not a probie,” he protested.
She poked him. “Feels like new meat to me.”
A human wouldn’t have noticed his microscopic lean into the touch, but Abby wasn’t human.
It was pathetic, he knew, but his only other significant touch for about two weeks now had come from two head slaps from Gibbs, and while the fey part of him didn’t care one way or the other, the wolf was getting touch hungry. He just hadn’t realized it was getting touch hungry enough to want to get cuddly with a vampire, even one with Gibbs’ seal of approval and that thus was presumably safe.
“Abbs,” Gibbs said from behind them, his tone a little warning.
Abby’s expression was already softening. “Okay, okay. We both keep our fangs away, and I’ll stop poking you. Mostly. I can be bribed with Caff-POWs.” She held out her hand expectantly.
He shook it a bit bemusedly. “Caff-POWs?” he asked with a pointed sniff.
She waved her free hand dismissively. She still hadn’t let go of his. “Just because I don’t sleep doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy caffeine. I add the flavoring myself. Now come take a look at this.” She dragged him over to one of her computers.
Tony felt Gibbs disappear out the door behind them. He shot one pleading look over his shoulder, but it was more for form’s sake than anything. Death cold or not, Abby’s hand felt very welcome in his.
Before he left, she started the tradition of giving him at least one Abby-hug a day.
Pack, the wolf in him thought warmly.
Quite possibly the strangest one ever, but that was alright. Tony thought he could get used to this.
Kate was - Well, Kate was a lot of things.
The wolf in him thought she was a threat to his place in the pack, but at the same time wasn’t entirely opposed to adding another female to the pack.
Tony thought he should probably keep that thought to himself.
The fey side of himself was a little concerned about the symbolism of adding yet another of death’s creatures to the team, and that, that was another thought he kept to himself. Gibbs didn’t need to hear the rumors going around that his unusual team somehow meant he had a death wish.
It had taken all of Tony’s self-control not to start a fight when he heard that rumor. Gibbs trusted them, had accepted them. If the gossipers thought anyone on the team would turn on Gibbs after that, than they were delusional.
Tony’s judicious use of threats aside, Kate was new and different, and the all too human part of him that he jealously guarded wasn’t sure it liked new and different. Hadn’t they been doing alright as they were? Hadn’t he been working hard enough? Why did they need another person?
His talk with Gibbs helped, but he was still bristling a little when Kate brought her stuff in that first morning.
Kate rolled her eyes. “Down, boy. I don’t care about whatever pack dynamics you’ve got set up.”
“Who said anything about a pack?”
“Your body language. Very, very clearly.” She set her stuff down on the desk and turned to face him. The shadows under her black eyes were suddenly a lot clearer, and Tony realized for the first time how tired she was.
“So why are you here?” he asked curiously. “They probably wouldn’t have made you leave. The Secret Service is always desperate for banshees.”
Kate’s lips tightened. “If I tell you, can you set your issues aside and get to work?”
“Sure,” he said, smiling brightly.
She looked at him doubtfully - fair enough - but she spilled anyway. “You know why they’re so desperate for banshees?”
“Sure. You predict death. Seems handy in that line of work.”
“And there’s only one way we can prevent that death. It’s expected that if we predict the president’s death that we’ll be prepared to make that sacrifice.”
He nodded. “And you weren’t sure you could do that?”
Solid black eyes shouldn’t be able to flash, but hers did. “I would have done my duty.” She sighed. “It’s just that, as long as we’re in service, our contract says that the president is the only one we’ll die for.”
Tony connected the dots. “You knew Major Kerry was going to die.”
“And I couldn’t do anything about it.” She dropped into her chair. “Anything else?”
“Would you have died for him? If you could?”
She shrugged tightly. “I don’t know, but I was ready for a job where I’d have a choice.”
“Fair enough.” The moment was getting a little too emotional, so he stretched and got up. “Speaking of things worth dying for, one of the tech’s brought in some of these chocolate cookies that - “
“Are going to have to wait.” Gibbs walked around the corner. “We’ve got a body.”
“We could grab some on our way out?” Tony said hopefully.
Kate rolled her eyes. Gibbs cuffed the back of his head.
“Getting the car now, Boss.”
McGee . . . McGee was a whole other barrel of fish.
He, at least, did not smell of death.
He didn’t smell like anything.
Not of sawdust, strong drink, and warmth like Gibbs. Not of latex, steel, and decay like Ducky. Not of any of the other smells that humans so casually picked up by proximity.
Nothing.
Yet his heartbeat was resolutely human.
So. McGeek was actually McWizard.
The vacant hole where McGee’s scent should be made his nose twitch irritably and his hackles start to rise. A bad scent was one thing. No scent was something else. An abomination.
Kate scoffed at him when he described it that way to her. “Don’t you think you’re being a bit melodramatic, Tony?”
“Even air has a scent, Kate,” he insisted. “McWizard’s got nothing. Nada. Not only does he not exist, he creates a vacuum in the place where he should exist. Come on. You can’t tell me your banshee senses aren’t tingling.”
Kate rolled her eyes. “Wait till he’s dying. Then we’ll talk.”
“I might be willing to speed that up a bit,” he muttered.
“No killing the probie,” Gibbs ordered. Tony jumped. “He’s our local contact. We need him.” He walked past them to the car.
“Is there a Gibbs shaped hole in your senses too?” Kate asked sweetly.
“It’s Gibbs,” he protested. “He doesn’t register as a threat.”
“You coming?” Gibbs called sharply.
Kate winced. “Even when he hasn’t had his coffee?”
Tony raised his arms helplessly.
He thought it was probably better not to tell her that as far as the wolf was concerned, unless they were in danger, the pack was just an extension of itself, and thus, not something to note in a world full of strange and dangerous scents to keep track of.
Especially since Kate was now pack.
When McGee officially joined the team, the problem became a bit more serious. It was one thing to jump when Gibbs came up behind him. It was another thing to constantly have to watch his back to make sure a potentially homicidal wizard wasn’t sneaking up behind him.
“I just can’t get over a guy that doesn’t smell like anything,” Tony complained to Abby. “And Kate’s finally admitted that she can’t hear him, whatever that means, so I’m not the only one having a problem.”
Abby frowned. “Tim’s got a scent. I can smell his blood just fine. It’s got that sort of zippy tang to it that magic always gives - oh!”
Tony leaned forward on his stool. “What?”
“Kate can’t hear him. That doesn’t mean that she can’t, like, physically hear him, it means that she can’t get a grip on what his death song should sound like.”
“I thought banshees only heard those when someone was about to die.”
“They only sing them when someone’s about to die,” Abby corrected. “Apparently the music gets extra loud then. But they can always hear them. Except it’s not an actual sound - it’s actually through some kind of psychic connection.”
“So?”
“So, when you say you smell someone, I don’t think you’re actually getting an actual smell. I bet if you really tried, you could still smell McGee’s jacket or whatever. What you can’t smell is his essence, and it’s driving you crazy.”
“I think I would know if I were psychic,” he protested. “And that doesn’t sound like any werewolf power I’ve ever heard of.” Not that there might not be some pack out there that had it - there were almost as many variations on werewolves as there were packs - but surely Dad would have mentioned something like that if it had been in the family curse.
“But you’re not just a werewolf, are you?” Abby said, jumping up and down a little in her excitement. “You’ve got fey blood too.”
“It doesn’t actually do anything!” Or nothing helpful, anyway. Binding curses and the distinct possibility that he might live longer than he liked weren’t helpful.
“That you know of,” Abby pointed out. “I think that ability got connected with your sense of smell and you just never consciously separated the two. And since I’m sure Timmy has shields up to keep anyone from messing with his mind . . . “
“No spare essence for me to sniff out,” he said, glumly accepting her theory. “Great. Still doesn’t fix the problem, though.”
“Well, I can’t fake a death song,” Abby agreed, drooping a little, “but! But I might be able to do something about the other.” She grabbed for her phone. “Gibbs! I needs McGee down here now.” She bounced anxiously as she waited for McGee to get up there.
Tim poked his head in nervously. “Abby? Tony?”
“Hey, McShielded,” Tony greeted him. “Come on in. Abby’s had an idea.”
Abby grabbed McGee and dragged him over to one of the empty stools. “Tell me everything.”
McGee shot Tony a panicked glance. “About?”
“You, silly! I’m going to get Ducky to help me brew up something that will stop Tony from being all growly around you, and I can’t do that if all I’m going off of is three meetings and a bad taste in shirts.” She frowned at him.
McGee shot another nervous look at Tony, and Tony decided the McGeek might be more comfortable spilling his life story without his intimidating presence. “Well, as fascinating as I’m sure that will be, I’ve gotta go. Let me know what you come up with, Abbs.”
To be honest, he wasn’t sure what he’d expected. One of those little air fresheners you hung in your car dangling out of McGee’s pocket, maybe. ‘Certified Geek Scented’ or something like that.
Instead, Abby called them both up to the lap where a perfume bottle full of glittering liquid stood under an improvised spotlight.
“Behold, eau de McGee!” she said proudly. She grabbed the bottle and spritzed it on McGee before he could protest.
While McGee was still sputtering, Tony took a deep breath in.
Old books. Typewriter ink. A spark of electricity. And a faint hint of the bittersweet tang of magic that might have been what was holding the scent together or might have been meant to represent the scent hiding in McGee’s blood.
It probably wasn’t exactly what McGee’s essence actually smelled like, but it was close enough to what Tony’s subconscious thought it should smell like that some of that nagging sense of wrongness went away.
“I have to wear this everyday?” McGee complained.
Tony slung an arm around his shoulder. “Ah, come on, McGee. You smell good.”
“But - “
“And I won’t tell Gibbs who spilled his coffee.”
“Done.”
Tony loved the opportunity to spar with Gibbs in training. It was a chance to test his limits without having to worry about the consequences, because if there was one thing he was sure of, it was that Gibbs could handle anything he threw at him.
And it just felt right to his instincts, normally so carefully guarded, to let loose and train for war with the leader of his pack.
For those precious minutes, he wasn’t fighting for attention. He wasn’t plotting how to get a casual touch. He had Gibbs’ full focus as they wrestled on the mat.
He didn’t mind losing. He just loved the game.
A strong leader at the head of the pack. A certain female fellow agent who was slowly warming up to him. A youngling to train in the ways of the pack. A healer and his assistant downstairs, and a fellow protector dancing happily in her lab. Tony had never wanted more. Had rarely even dreamed of having this much. If he could have just this forever, it would be enough.
Then one day as they worked, he heard someone start to hum.
He glanced up, frowning, because it sounded like Kate doing the humming, and Kate had never sung a note without there being a dying victim present before, for obvious reasons. People got twitchy around singing banshees.
But Kate was humming now, seemingly without realizing it. The sound grew louder and louder until it transformed into a wordless song.
It made the transition just as Gibbs walked into the bullpen.
Kate’s eyes widened in horrified realization, but the song didn’t stop.
McGee’s hands had frozen on his keyboard, Tony was half out of his seat and growling, but Gibbs barely paused on his way over to his desk. “Not dead yet,” he told them. “We’ve got work to do.”
Kate’s song dropped back to a hum, but it didn’t stop.
Tony didn’t know what it sounded like to the others.
To him, it sounded like madness, and a lone wolf howling a ragged lament.
He pulled Kate aside as soon as he could. Gibbs was with Abby and McGee. The two of them should be able to keep him safe for the moment.
“You can sense when it’s getting closer, right?”
She nodded wearily. “We still have a little time. Not much.”
“I know the only way to stop a death is with another death,” he said in an undertone.
Kate’s mouth set grimly. “I don’t - “
“So when it comes down to it, tell me where I need to be.”
She blinked at him. “What?”
“Push me in the path of the bullet, tell me I need to be the first around the corner, I don’t care. Whatever it takes. Just make sure I know what I need to do to get in the way.” He was older now. Technically, he might be able to lead the pack on his own.
Practically, he was determined to prevent that necessity or die trying. Or, in this case, both.
Kate squeezed his hand, new determination in her eyes. “Speaking of things worth dying for, huh?”
“Promise me,” he whispered desperately.
“We’ll save him,” she promised.
Technically, she didn’t break her word.
He just didn’t see that until it was too late.
There was a hole in his sense of the world. A Kate shaped spot that should have smelled of bullets, chocolate, and, least importantly, death.
Kate still smelled of at least two of those things, but now the smell just made him feel sick.
He wished Gibbs had let him come to the Challenge against Ari. He wanted to rip the hunter’s throat out with his teeth.
Then Ziva started prowling around Kate’s space, overwhelming her fading scent with her own smell.
Silver. Sand. A heat entirely unlike Gibbs’.
And, underneath it all, the scent of dried blood.
She was a hunter. He was pretty sure that scent was both psychic and literal.
Abby agreed with him.
The night after the news about the house party that neither he nor Abby had been invited to came out, Tony wandered over to Gibbs’ basement. He liked it down here. It smelled pretty much exactly like Gibbs, minus the warmth.
Gibbs was sanding down the boat. He tossed a piece of sandpaper to Tony and they got to work.
Tony - surprise, surprise - was the first to break the silence. “Was Palmer there?”
“Nope.”
“No monsters allowed, huh? You know, my friends and I used to play a game like that, except the rule was no girls allowed. And we grew out of that when we were about twelve. Don’t guess that will work now with Abby here. We could still start our own club, though. Monsters Anonymous, no normals allowed - “
Gibbs hand on the back of his head cut him off.
“Unless, of course, you want to come,” Tony corrected quickly. “We can bake cookies. It’ll be great.”
“That part’s not the problem, DiNozzo.”
Tony ran back over the rest of what he’d just said. “And . . . I will get over my childish dislike of being excluded and allow Ziva to invite who and what she likes over in peace?”
Gibbs actually snorted at that. “Try again.”
Tony scanned his rant again. “I’ve got nothing, Boss.”
“The monster bit?” Gibbs suggested mildly. “Pretty sure we had a seminar on not talking like that.”
“You paid attention during one of the seminars, Boss?”
Gibbs raised an eyebrow, and Tony backtracked quickly.
“Right. You’re always paying attention. Sorry, Boss.”
Gibbs shook his head in a way Tony was almost sure was fondly and got to the point. “You really going to tell me you think Abby’s a monster?”
Tony winced. No, he was not going to do that. He couldn’t really claim Palmer was either. He was just too earnestly awkward for that. “No, but the meetings will get awfully lonely if I’m the only member of the club.”
Gibbs put the sandpaper down and brought his arm up. Tony ducked his head preemptively, but the hand came to rest on his shoulder instead, where it gave a comforting squeeze. “I only take the best for my team. You’re not normal. You’re better than normal. And it’s got nothing to do with your blood.”
Tony’s smile felt more genuine than it had all day. “Very Special Agent DiNozzo. Curse or no curse, huh?”
“And fey or no fey,” Gibbs agreed. “I’ll talk to Ziva.”
Tony warmed up to Ziva by degrees until her scent was firmly entrenched as pack.
Not that he’d ever tell her that. She’d probably be horrified.
Still, things were pretty good again. There was still a Kate shaped hole, but he’d gotten used to operating around holes in the pack a long time ago.
And then the car Gibbs was in went off the dock into freezing cold water.
Tony had followed their connection the minute his concerns had gotten truly raised, but he hadn’t been quick enough.
Now Gibbs and the girl were in the water, and the gang that had driven them there was standing there, guns ready.
Tony didn’t even have to shift shapes to tear through them like paper.
And then the water waited.
Tony’s mother had worn her favorite silver necklace the day she had walked into the ocean with no intention of walking back out.
Tony had tried to swim out after her. If he had caught up with her, the silver necklace wouldn’t have been a problem. He wasn’t that kind of werewolf.
But he never got that far. Partially because he had been ten, but mainly because the water had been freezing cold.
And he was that kind of werewolf.
Back in the day, the legend had been that you could cure an Italian werewolf by holding them down in ice water as they were about to change forms.
That was true, for a given value of “cure.”
Death cured most things.
He hadn’t been in the middle of changing when he’d swum after his mother, though. He hadn’t been trapped in the agony of half one thing, half another.
Or no more than usual, anyway.
He had survived. It had been a near thing, but he had survived.
He was older now. Stronger. He had a pack to lend him strength.
And this was Gibbs. Gibbs and an innocent.
A second had passed, no more.
Tony dived.
The water felt like knives. The wolf tried to spring forward to defend him, but it was just as quickly shoved back. His muscles rippled, trying to shift first one way, then the other. Tony was pretty sure he’d rather walk through fire.
He swam deeper.
The magic bubbled up to the surface of his skin. HIs muscles were seizing up.
He didn’t have time for caution or restrained strength.
He ripped the door off the car, grabbed the girl since she was closest, and swam for the surface.
He broke the surface and gasped, precious relief granted to the parts of him above water. He threw the girl onto the dock.
And forced himself back down.
His connection to Gibbs drew him deeper, but it was flickering in and out.
If Tony’d been on the surface, he would have been screaming.
Gibbs. Gibbs. Gibbs.
Gibbs was limp when Tony finally reached him. Tony felt about to pass out himself.
The surface. He had to get them to the surface.
His heart was beating too fast, working too hard to try to keep him alive. His muscles were half wolf and half human and almost useless. He was running on magic and will alone, and if he’d been alone, he wasn’t sure the second one would have been enough to get him to the surface.
But his pack was in danger. Gibbs was in danger.
Tony broke the surface and crawled onto dry land, dragging Gibbs behind him.
Neither of the two people he’d rescued were breathing.
Tony dropped to his knees beside them. He wanted to lay down and sleep for the next hundred years. He wanted to rest.
Instead, he forced air into their lungs and prayed.
After, when they were all being examined by the nice paramedics, Gibbs managed to make his way over to him. He had an odd look on his face.
“Boss?” Tony asked nervously.
Gibbs shook the odd expression off. “You did good.”
“He almost committed suicide was what he did,” one of the paramedics snapped. “He had absolutely no business being in water that cold, and he knew it. We’re going to get a specialist at the hospital to get him checked over.”
“Superman never has to get checked over after someone hits him with kryptonite,” Tony grumbled.
“In case you haven’t noticed, you’re not a superhero,” the exasperated paramedic said. “Now please hold still.”
For once, Tony did as he was told. Stillness turned pretty quick to sleep.
But Gibbs was sitting by his bedside when he woke up, Abby had left a little teddy bear with a superhero cape, and the rest of the pack’s scents were all over the room, so that was alright.
Ziva left. Tony watched her go with a heart full of might have beens.
They could have been good together, he thought, but while Ziva had come to terms with being on a team with him, getting together with something her family had spent centuries hunting was a whole other question.
Still, distance didn’t change the fact that she was pack. If she ever needed him, he’d come running.
Bishop came. She smelled like meat, junk food, sweaters, and hunger.
There was part of Tony that warned of danger and wanted him to avoid her.
The rest of him brought her a cupcake and focused more on her smile than the way she couldn’t eat it fast enough.
Tony still loved to spar with Gibbs, but he didn’t go quite full out now.
Gibbs could still beat him, of course, Tony never doubted that, but it took more out of him now, and Tony didn’t want Gibbs to have to push when he didn’t have to. He’d seen the way Gibbs struggled with aches and pains now, and the last thing he wanted to do was aggravate them.
McGee had noticed too. He’d started enchanting Gibbs’ chair to ease those aches. Abby was conspiring with Ducky to slip things into Gibbs’ coffee. Bishop hadn’t noticed yet, but then, she was still new. She didn’t know what Gibbs’ eyes looked like without tight lines of pain around them.
After the gunshot wound, it just got worse. They walked carefully around him, trying to help any way they could, even when all they could do was back off and let him have the privacy he seemed to want.
Gibbs lashed out more, but Tony understood that. Pain tended to do that to people.
You’re still in charge, he tried to say with his body language. We’ll respect you no matter how much pain you’re in, he tried to say with his quick responses to orders.
He asked to spar less and cut the time they fought shorter. He helped Abby and Ducky research better ways to help him. He distracted Bishop when a flash of pain finally made its way onto Gibbs’ face. He took over whatever duties he could.
An ancient, buried instinct suggested that he might could take over the pack, but Tony suppressed it in disgust, and the rest of his instincts were in agreement with him.
Gibbs’ pack. Gibbs’ rules. Gibbs who had welcomed him into this family and saved his life. Saved his sanity.
That kind of blood debt didn’t just go away, his fey side knew, and this was Gibbs. It didn’t matter if Gibbs was on his deathbed, he would never be weak, and they weren’t even close to that point yet.
Gibbs was family, and Tony would do whatever Gibbs needed him to do.
Except. Except, there was one thing he couldn’t do, one time his instincts got away from him.
There was going to be a Challenge, and Gibbs still hadn’t healed from his wound. There was going to be a Challenge, and it hit all the wrong buttons in Tony.
So instead of standing aside as was his proper place at this stage of the hunt, he stepped forward and claimed the kill for himself.
If this were a normal wolf pack he could have been thrown out for that, but they had never been accused of being normal. He didn’t think Gibbs would be quite that angry, but he was expecting a reprimand all the same.
“That’ll be a load of paperwork,” he said, trying to pass it off as a joke.
The others were applauding, he realized with a wince.
But Gibbs - Gibbs smiled.
Tony grinned back.
After that, Tony figured he had permission to do what he had to. Gibbs had always been pretty understanding about things like that, so he shouldn’t have been surprised that he was willing to indulge Tony in this.
The others started doing it too. Not at all conventional, but, well. None of them were.
The electricity went down in most of D.C. and their apartments lost heat one by one. They ended up crowded into Gibbs’ living room, gathered around his fire, and practically on top of each other.
Tony curled into the warmth. They were here, and they were safe. He was part of them, and they were part of him.
There was no warmth quite like the warmth of the pack.